THE GUIDE - The Rough Guide to Bali and Lombok - page 103

KUTA-LEGIAN-SEMINYAK ORIENTATION
It's now impossible to recognize the demarcation lines between the once-separate villages
of Kuta, Legian and Seminyak. We've used the common perception of the neighbourhood
borders : Kuta stretches north from the Matahari department store in Kuta Square to Jalan
Melasti; Legian runs from Jalan Melasti as far north as Jalan Arjuna; and Seminyak ex-
tends from Jalan Arjuna to The Oberoi hotel, where Petitenget begins. Petitenget feeds into
Kerobokan and then north up to the string of Canggu area beaches, not strictly within the
Kuta boundaries but close enough to share facilities. Kuta's increasingly built-up southern
fringes, extending south from Matahari to the airport, are defined as south Kuta/Tuban.
The resort's main road , which begins as Jalan Legian and becomes Jalan Raya Seminyak,
runs north-south through all three main districts, a total distance of 5km. The bulk of resort
facilities are packed into the 600m-wide strip between Jalan Legian in the east and the coast
to the west, an area crisscrossed by tiny gang (alleyways) and larger one-way roads.
The other main landmark is Bemo Corner, a minuscule roundabout at the southern end of
Kuta that stands at the Jalan Legian-Jalan Pantai Kuta intersection. The name is misleading
as the Denpasar bemos don't actually leave from here, but it's a useful point of reference.
Brief history
For centuries, Kuta was considered by the Balinese to be an infertile stretch of coast haunted
by malevolent spirits and a dumping ground for lepers and criminals. In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries it operated as a slave port when the Balinese rajas sold hundreds of
thousands of people to their counterparts in Java and beyond. By the mid-nineteenth century,
however, life had become more prosperous - thanks in part to the energetic Danish business
trader Mads Lange , who set up home here in 1839. Lange's political influence was also sig-
nificant and, thanks to his diplomatic skills, south Bali avoided falling under the first phase
of Dutch control when the north succumbed in 1849. Eventually the Dutch took control in
1906 following the mass ritual suicide in Denpasar of hundreds of members of the Badung
court.
In 1936 the Americans Bob and Louise Koke spotted Kuta's tourist potential and built a
small hotel; they named it the Kuta Beach Hotel (now succeeded by the Inna Kuta Beach )
and, until the Japanese invasion of 1942, the place flourished. World War II and its aftermath
stemmed the tourist flow until the 1960s, when young travellers established Kuta as a high-
light on the hippie trail . Homestays were eventually joined by smarter international outfits,
and Kuta-Legian-Seminyak has since evolved into the most prosperous region of the island,
drawing workers from across Bali as well as the rest of Indonesia.
The flood of fortune-seekers from other parts of Indonesia raised the ugly spectre of racism
and religious tension, but no one could have anticipated the October 12, 2002 bomb attack ,